


Match

by Primal_Nexus



Series: 'Twas Lunchies in the Replimat [5]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: 'Twas Drama at Quark's, Fade to Black, Kanar is a helluva drug, M/M, POV Elim Garak, POV Julian Bashir, Post-Episode: S04E04 Hippocratic Oath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 10:40:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28350024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Primal_Nexus/pseuds/Primal_Nexus
Summary: Julian Bashir falls out with Miles O’Brien after a less-than-dignified escape from the clutches of the rogue Jem’Hadar unit headed by Goran’Agar. Julian goes to Garak for affirmation and support. Uncomfortable confrontations with hypocrisy ensue. To the victor go the spoils!
Relationships: Julian Bashir/Elim Garak
Series: 'Twas Lunchies in the Replimat [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2019175
Comments: 14
Kudos: 55





	Match

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by the incomparable [ectogeo](https://www.archiveofourown.org/users/ectogeo/pseuds/plain_and_simple_tailor).

“I thought it was the only way to save your life. Whatever else you may think of who I am and what I did, at least _try_ to understand that.”

* * *

Julian had been just exhausted enough in the runabout with Miles that his full emotional response had been delayed until after they had disembarked and gone their separate ways. What rankled most of all in retrospect was that Miles had (on top of committing a deadly reportable betrayal) the gall to seem angry with _Julian_. And, perhaps worse than that, he gave the impression of finding Julian too _stupid_ to grasp the nobler motives for his atrocious behavior—atrocities that Miles had barely acknowledged committing in the first place! They had left behind dead people on that planet. Julian could have saved them. Miles had destroyed important research (yes, accomplished under considerable duress, but still valuable all the same) that could have saved millions more who were yoked to the Founders through their dependency on Ketracel-white.

“I just don’t see why this should keep two friends from enjoying their regularly scheduled game of darts,” Garak admitted. He had consented to join Julian for a nightcap at Quark’s without advance notice, but if he was otherwise pleased or relieved to see Julian return several days late shockingly in one piece and seemingly little worse for wear after being held captive by a rogue squad of Jem’Hadar, he wasn’t yet showing it.

“You can’t be serious,” Julian responded wearily, wrapping his hand in a glum visor of exhaustion around his brow. His other hand fiddled with the indentations on his glass. He had opted to give kanar yet another go at Garak’s mild urging but had so far managed only one reluctant sip. It was sweet, but there was a rank sourness underneath, almost a sort of fermented sting. It reminded Julian of pickled beets, which he despised. He peeked through his fingers at Garak and groaned. “You _are_ serious.” He dropped his hand and straightened in his chair. “This is up _setting_ , Garak. I don’t even know if I’m going to be able to continue a friendship with Miles. And before this, I would have considered him my _best_ friend.”

“Well, I suppose he _did_ violate protocol.”

“Violate protocol,” Julian repeated flatly.

“And I’m sure he embarrassed you, disobeying orders like that.”

“Embarrassed… You _can’t_ —” 

“I only mean to say, my dear Doctor, that although you are a man of considerable pride and significant vanity, you are also very kind and understanding. Perhaps Chief O’Brien might have behaved differently had he known that your friendship was at stake.”

“Those _lives_ were at stake!” Julian spluttered, unable to contain himself any longer.

“And what about _your_ life?”

“What _about_ my life?” He hated to admit it, but beneath the shocked recoil of his robust personal moral structure, what Garak had observed about his pridefulness and vain tendencies had stung and struck deep to the core of an issue Julian found himself not quite prepared to face head on.

“Would it surprise you, my dear, if I told you that I would have made similar decisions and would have been motivated by the very same concerns, had I been in the Chief’s place?”

Julian hadn’t been aware that they were trying to break the record for the number of times he would either think or say, _You can’t be serious_ , in the course of a single conversation.

“ _You_ wouldn’t have destroyed my work,” Julian insisted. “And you might have left without me, but you would have left me to do what I needed to do.”

Shot-for-shot, Julian was still losing. If his insinuation had done any damage, Garak gave no sign. If anything, he seemed only mildly annoyed.

“Really, Doctor, a handful of Jem’Hadar weighed against the value of your life? It wouldn’t be a difficult decision for me.”

“But what about _all_ the Jem’Hadar?” Julian pressed. “What about disarming the Dominion by effectively eliminating their shock troops in a single blow that might have only cost one life? Or maybe even no one’s life? What about freeing all those people?”

“Were you so close to a breakthrough in your research?”

“I don’t _know_!” Julian snapped, and immediately he regretted it. He had been working on giving credit where credit was due. After all, Garak had been born, raised, and professionally groomed for debate—it was an arena in which he remained undefeated. And right now Julian wanted, _needed_ support, not to simply be soundly bested, as thrilling as that could be when Garak was the one doing the besting. “Look,” Julian continued after a forceful exhalation meant to dispel the panic and defensiveness. It only partially worked. “You’re right. Maybe the other Jem’Hadar would have descended into violent psychosis if I didn’t isolate Goran’Agar’s contributing mutations quickly enough. Even if I had managed that, I would have had to synthesize a treatment in less than a day in extremely subpar lab conditions. It’s honestly pretty likely that they would have turned on Goran’Agar and killed him… and me… and Miles.”

“Then certainly my earlier point stands.” _Game point_ , Julian admonished himself silently.

“But _still_ , you wouldn’t have destroyed my research.”

“No. I would have incapacitated you easily, and, regarding your research, ah, there’s a saying, I believe: the devil may take it.”

“I don’t suppose it would bother you at _all_ that it wouldn’t be the right thing to do.”

“Right in whose estimation, I wonder? Doctor Bashir, you _are_ sharing a bottle of kanar with the type of fellow who is at his best doing his worst.”

“Is that so, _tailor_?” Julian raised his eyebrows high in mocking imitation of the expression Garak had often used with varying degrees of success to extricate himself from suspicious circumstances.

“A _good tailor_. I’ve never claimed to be a good _person_. I am, alas, a _terrible_ gossip, as you well know. In fact, I’m very surprised to find myself your confidante this evening, even in the Chief’s understandable absence.”

_Game? At this rate, he’s going for the golden set_ , Julian thought through the course of an extended eye-roll. He picked up his glass and held it out with his best effort at a purely sardonic sneer.

“Well, we can agree then, _that_ particular choice was perhaps a lapse in judgment on my part.”

Garak’s expression brightened with fondness as he raised his glass, and this took all the teeth out of Julian’s previously biting demeanor in an instant. As Julian clinked their glasses together, he knew what was coming, and he couldn’t suppress a keen grin when Garak spoke the words:

“I believe, my dear Doctor, that there may be hope for you yet.”

Julian took a brave gulp of his kanar and stifled a gag. The conclusion of this match seemed foregone.

* * *

“So, you’d just knock me over the head and drag me back to the Rubicon in that case? _You_ said you were a changed man,” Julian accused.

Garak thought he had trotted out all the appropriate verbiage to draw negotiations to a graceful close in his favor, but the kanar Julian had managed to choke down at Quark’s had allowed the argument to resurface in less than delicate ways. It was a good thing Julian had agreed to move their continuing conversation to private quarters (the Doctor’s) before evidencing the typical lovely pique brought on by intoxication of this sort. Bashir was now given to clumsy swings of a metaphorical axe rather than precise movements of a scalpel. But Garak didn’t mind. It was more than forgivable.

“No, _you_ said I was a changed man,” Garak corrected. It was a denial without qualification, but qualification was hardly warranted when deflecting ad hominems entirely lacking sophistication. “ _I_ merely implied that I was playing a changed game, with unfamiliar rules and stakes. Doctor, your typical naïveté suddenly strikes a less winsome note.”

A more sophisticated ad hominem rebuttal for the dear Doctor, then, and they would see how well he would handle _that_. Admittedly, Garak was lying, and flagrantly so. The flush of the Doctor’s cheeks, the inelegant considering movements of his mouth as he rolled his retort on his tongue to test it out, the flashes of played-up outrage in his eyes, those little vertical furrows that appeared where his nose flattened into his forehead—all of it Garak found delightful in the extreme.

“I am _not_ naive!” Julian shouted, yanking Garak out of blissful reverie. Oh, such bluntness! Ugly and delicious, the dear Doctor’s flailings. Wonderful, but Garak couldn’t possibly dignify this with a response. He seated himself in a drably upholstered standard Starfleet living area chair and took a dainty sip of the rokasa juice Julian had thoughtfully replicated for him upon welcoming him into his quarters. The sweet one, oh, he couldn’t stand the silence, the patient attention Garak knew had taken up residence on his face, if only just to prod further, a little further. Why not? It was thrilling in ways that Garak could otherwise no longer enjoy.

Julian all but collapsed onto the sofa opposite him and gave a very handsome frown. Garak’s eyes widened at the same rate that the Doctor’s narrowed in thought. He really had to do something about these horrific displays of naked interest. The Doctor, after all, was a formidable opponent who didn’t need _so_ much advantage. Julian swallowed and flicked his gaze to his hands. Something different was coming, and Garak silently braced. “I know it’s easier for you to think that, you know? That I’m pretty hopeless sometimes, naive like you say… but sometimes I wonder if you tell me that, and you tell yourself that, just so you don’t have to deal with the pain of disappointing me.”

And so there it was, the unexpected (and yet, _and yet_ , the _gloriously anticipated_ ) note to bend the chord. Fresh, complicated pain rang out from deep inside, and it was alien and beautiful in its way for having been so rare in Garak’s life, particularly for the number of years he had had his implant. He didn’t know what to do with it, except to acknowledge it and let it pass through him, out of him.

“My entire life up to this moment is surely a massive disappointment to you,” Garak admitted before he could think better of giving the sentiment voice. Oh, _terrible_ sentiment, very dangerous, and so useless. He, like Julian, had perhaps indulged in just a _touch_ too much kanar.

When Julian looked up to meet his gaze, his human eyes were intolerably misty, his pupils dilating in that curiously human display of empathy. A less gorgeous thing, this, than the ire of moments before, but Garak counseled himself to be patient. 

“I’ve already forgiven you, Elim. You _begged_ me to.”

Garak bristled at the use of his given name. The Doctor had no _right_. It was, as Bashir himself might have said under different circumstances, _A Bridge Too Far_ (What Julian saw in the film, beyond its featuring of a twentieth-century actor who had also enacted the role of James Bond, was beyond Garak, but he nonetheless encouraged the divulgence and exploration of any interesting turn of phrase the Doctor had to offer). 

Garak, plain and simple, was a modestly successful, extremely resourceful tailor aboard a recommissioned space station. Elim was a boy forever locked in a dark pantry. 

“Elim is _dead_ ,” Garak said finally, quietly but with considerable malice. “And if _you_ think that one gesture of forgiveness, offered without context or knowledge, can save _me_ , then _I_ think that the apparently artful and sophisticated Doctor doth protest too much.”

“There!” Julian snapped his fingers and stood up suddenly, pointing at Garak. Unwilling to cede physical dominance of the space, Garak stood in turn. “Shakespeare? Garak, you _hate_ Shakespeare! Don’t you see? You’re not who you were anymore. You’d make different choices.”

“That does _nothing_ to address the choices that have already been made, my dear.” Garak arrested Julian’s swift approach around the short table that stood between them by raising his hands up, warding off the advance. He held the cup of rokasa juice out before him like a pitiful shield. “I’ve only ever wanted to be redeemed in service to Cardassia, and since I’ve seen that I can no longer achieve it through the only means I’ve ever had at my disposal, redemption in _your_ eyes certainly is nothing more than a vague, useless motion toward a prize of consolation for me.” Julian paused, startled, and Garak took a step forward, reclaiming the advantage. Julian was listening, rapt, but the wind was going quite out of his sails, and his narrow shoulders had started to slump. “There now, do _you_ see? We can _both_ be disappointed. I look at you, young Doctor Bashir, and I see a man who would _break_. Oh, in terrible, _lovely_ ways. Why do you think I was so eager to make your acquaintance in the first place?”

“We are _far_ beyond the _first place_.” Garak had to stifle a gasp. It was powerful, the reaction, to this graceful counter. Was it pain or pleasure? The broken neural pathways failed to deliver a decipherable message. “If you can’t admit you’re changed, and you _are_ , and you dismiss the relevance and meaning of that change, then at least let _me_ say that _I_ have changed. You told me I was strong. Look, I know things—”

“You don’t _know_ the first substantive thing about me, and I think it’s in both our best interests that it remains that way.” Quick, painless, as was the only kindness Garak could muster in this moment. He had to decapitate this wild creature, this terrifying new turn, before it hurt him. But it served him right, he knew, for being so curious, for egging the Doctor on, for the crime of gross underestimation.

“I know you love me,” Julian whispered. _No!_ Garak despaired internally. This couldn’t be about him, it hadn’t been about him. It had been about Julian and Miles O’Brien and the Jem’Hadar and saving the quadrant. At a cost too dear. “But I also know that I can’t take that as a guarantee that you won’t betray me or hurt me. Especially if you think it means protecting me… probably from yourself, primarily.”

Garak forced himself out of the recesses of his discomfort and made a last desperate grab for control, schooling his features into unyielding blankness.

“I am growing tired of this discussion.”

“Why?” Julian stepped closer, very close indeed, and Garak heard and felt the brief pop of pressure as he swallowed— _Inexcusable! Sloppy!_ “Is it because I have the upper hand for once?”

“You don’t know what you’re doing!” Garak hated the feeling that was coming through in his tone as plain as the flash of a blade on a three-moon-lit night. How was he suddenly so lost? Was this punishment? Reward? Julian leaned in.

“I’m _winning_.”

It was oblivion. It was Julian’s mouth, again, as it had been only a few times before, hot, demanding, against his own. Garak parted his lips and surrendered. He had no choice but to forfeit. The cup of rokasa juice fell unheeded from his grasp as he grabbed helplessly to deepen the embrace.

**Author's Note:**

> I, uh, hahaha. Here I am, still flailing about. Don't know what I'm doing!
> 
> This entry marinated and stewed for a WHILE.
> 
> I don't know if I can fill the void with comments and kudos, but dang it, I want to try! FILL ME UP, SCOTTY. No, shh, I wasn't being gross. Shh.


End file.
